Athletics has become the first sport to offer prize money to Olympic champions, announcing in a landmark decision on Wednesday that the 48 gold medallists in Paris this year will earn $50,000 each.

In the modern Olympics, which started in 1896 in Athens, athletes have not received prize money from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Although the concept of a purely amateur competition had long since disappeared with successful athletes often receiving payments from governments and sponsors, the decision by World Athletics breaks 128 years of Olympic tradition.

“This is the continuation of a journey we started back in 2015, which sees all the money World Athletics receives from the International Olympic Committee for the Olympic Games go directly back into our sport,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said in a statement after announcing the $2.4 million prize pot for the Paris Games.

“While it is impossible to put a marketable value on winning an Olympic medal, or on the commitment and focus it takes to even represent your country at an Olympic Games, I think it is important we make sure some of the revenues generated by our athletes at the Olympic Games are directly returned to those who make the Games the global spectacle that it is.”

The amateur ethos of the Olympics, severely undermined by the success of state-sponsored competitors from the former Eastern Block, was swept away when the IOC agreed to allow professional athletes to compete in tennis, football and ice hockey at the 1988 Seoul Games.

Despite the continuing lack of prize money, athletes in many sports received hefty bonuses from sponsors for triumphing in the biggest shop window of all.

Athletics is the Olympics’ biggest sport but a vast majority of the athletes, including many Olympic medallists, face a constant struggle for funding.

When Briton Coe won his 1,500m gold medals at the 1980 and 1984 Games, the Olympics was officially a competition for amateurs. In 1992, the concept of trust funds for athletes was introduced and gold medallists at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart received Mercedes cars.

Olympic silver and bronze medallists in athletics will also receive prize money,
but only from the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

Reuters